To provide collaborative governance of the ongoing development, deployment, delivery and maintenance of Oregon.gov and future shared Web space.

What is the board's purpose?

Develop goals, vision and values of Oregon.gov

Provide oversight of the Oregon.gov public Web site

Establish appropriate channels to govern a future statewide intranet

Evaluate effectiveness, content, standards and policies

Improve consistency by positioning Oregon.gov as the “front door” to finding state information

Provide leadership to other state agencies on best practices for communicating via the Web

What is the board's organization structure?

The State E-governance Board is sponsored by the Governor´s Office and receives direction from the DAS Director’s Office. The board provides leadership to state agencies and makes decisions regarding Oregon.gov and shared Web structure to the DAS E-government Program.

The E-governance Board does not get involved in technology decisions; however, it recommends business needs for the enterprise.

How does the board's membership decision process work?

As vacancies occur the agency administrator will be responsible for appointing a replacement to the E-governance Board.

Members are expected to be present at every meeting. Substitutes are not permitted, although guests are encouraged. The making of decisions will not be postponed or nullified due to the absence of the member of the affected organization.

It is the responsibility of the E-governance Board to set direction for Oregon.gov and the shared Web environment; however, direction and policies need to be supported by all. In order to ensure that directions and policies are set with a full understanding of the issues and the impact of the decision, we agree that:

Decisions, appropriate to the jurisdiction of the E-governance Board will be reached by consensus of members present. Consensus is defined as achievement of full support for a decision after a complete airing of different viewpoints. Consensus is achieved through discussion, not voting. If the group cannot reach consensus, the majority and minority options will be presented to the DAS Deputy Director with a recommendation for resolution.

The board will continually look at opportunities to communicate relevant information to appropriate audiences.

What are the board's responsibilities?

Make decisions about strategic direction of Oregon.gov and shared Web structure.

Develop rules of engagement with the E-government Program (technical team).

Decide on and manage Key User Tasks (KUTs) and their content, including popularity boxes and most visited sites.

Manage “virtual space” or Web pages or content not owned by any one agency.

Organize cross-agency teams to share information about e-government.

Recommend new template additions or changes.

Develop and approve policies, processes or procedures.

Facilitate and resolve non-compliance issues.

What are the board's operating principles?

Statewide enterprise view and perspective:

Facilitate a user experience that will develop lasting “digital relationships" with citizens and visitors of the state giving them what they need, making it easy to ask or find, and being concise and relevant.

Arrange and present information in a way that will shorten the time spent online and increase the satisfaction of the experience.

An Agency SPOC (single point of contact) is authorized to submit Teamsite enrollment requests, content management change requests, or requests for help establishing a web site. TeamSite users work with their Agency's SPOC to submit these requests.

Click here for more information about the SPOC role (requires log in).

Fonts. The templates determine font style, size and color. To maintain consistency, do not override fonts with graphic images.

Serif vs. Sans Serif. In printed pages that are text heavy, a clean serif face is the most readable. For example, “Serif, Readable.” However, on the computer monitor, some sans serif faces are more readable because the letters have to fit into the pixels on the screen, and the missing serifs make cleaner letterforms. For example, “Sans Serif, Legible.”

Color. Do not overdo the use of color or choose background colors that make the text difficult for your viewer to read. Stick to a limited color palette, or color scheme, that is appealing and adds a feeling of sophistication and organization. Ultimately, the colors you choose should create an overall feeling for the site. Stay away from the use of neon bright colors.

RGB. RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. Computer monitors all create their images on the screen by emitting red, green, and blue light. In RGB, red mixed with green makes yellow. Every image you create for a Web page should be saved in the RGB mode.

CMYK. CMYK stands for Cyan (a blue), Magenta (the closest thing to red), Yellow, and BlacK. This color model is used when printing in full color. In CMYK, red mixed with green makes brown. Do not save images in CMYK for the Web.

Contrast. Contrast is what draws your viewer’s eye into the page. Contrasting elements guide your eyes around the page, create a hierarchy of information, and enable you to skim through the vast array of information and pick out what you need. The contrast might be different colors, graphic signposts, or a spatial arrangement.

Links are a form of contrast by virtue of their color, their underline, and their interruptive status.

Hint. To be effective, contrast must be strong. If two elements, such as type, rules, graphics, color, texture, etc., are not the same, make them very different – don’t make them almost the same!

Capitalization. For consistency, capitalize only initial letters in headlines, subheads and link lists.

Paragraph Spacing. Watch paragraph spacing when creating content within the body of a template (in the Visual Format Editor). Make sure each paragraph is divided with a line space (paragraph break) for readability. Be sure to preview the page. The way the text appears in the Visual Format Editor (VFE) is not necessarily accurate.

Page Length. Be aware of the length of your page. Text heavy pages where the viewer must scroll to continue reading will cause them to lose interest. Do your best to keep your pages short and easy to read. If they must be long, insert images to enhance the text and use templates with bookmarks at the top to help your reader navigate through the page.

Alignment. Alignment simply means that items on the page are lined up with each other. Lack of alignment is the single most prevalent problem on Web pages. This is the rule to follow: Choose One. Choose one alignment and use it on the entire page.

Spell Check. Use your spellchecker! Both bad spelling and bad grammar can destroy the professional effect of your Web site just as easily as can bad design.